RALEIGH – I can understand doing things for show. Really. If Carolina Journal readers ever suspected I was just giving them another song-and-dance, they’d have good reason.
But to put on a proper show, you have to, indeed, have a good reason. Sometimes an important message needs to be sent. Sometimes people want to be pushed out of their comfort zone, or simply to be entertained. The wrong reason to put on a show – and, I fear, the reason that several attorneys general, including North Carolina’s, staged a pointless conflict with MySpace about identifying users with previous convictions for sex crimes – is simply to increase one’s public notoriety and political reputation.
The popular social-networking site got an undeserved public-relations black eye from last month’s much-reported episode, which ended with MySpace being subpoenaed to turn over information about the several thousand sex offenders it had identified using a new software tool it had developed and implemented at great expense. Instead of being praised for having realized a safety risk to its customers and invested heavily in its reduction, MySpace was made to look as if it was shielding perverts and pedophiles from law enforcement.
Here’s how it happened. Last year, MySpace officials recognized that it had inadequate tools available to detect sex criminals using its site. So it contracted with a firm called Sentinel Tech Holdings to come up with a data-mining application to connect its registered users with various public databases of offenders. After months of development and testing, MySpace started the system up at the beginning of May. Every time it found a sex offender, MySpace blocked and deleted them from the site.
At the same time, attorneys general were working on regulatory responses and proposed legislation in their respective states to toughen penalties on online sex predators and require a higher level of parental consent for minors using social-networking sites. Several AGs, including our own Roy Cooper, decided to co-sign a letter to MySpace demanding that it turn over information about the sex offenders its system had detected and deleted. The letter was blatantly accompanied by press releases and other evidence of political grandstanding. Unfortunately, the letter was not accompanied by something that would seem to be required by federal privacy law: some kind of subpoena ordering the company to turn over the information.
MySpace believed it had no legal recourse but to deny the AGs’ request. I don’t understand why anyone would believe the company was trying to protect sexual predators. It was attempting to comply with federal statutes. At first, the politicians gnashed their teeth in the full and welcome glare of the media spotlight. Then they, well, got subpoenas and served them, receiving the information that MySpace was hardly reluctant to turn over in the first place as long as it didn’t expose the firm to legal liability.
MySpace was guilty of poor public relations here. The AGs were guilty of worse – of exploiting a legal dispute for political gain and for stirring up enough media coverage of MySpace’s new detection system that sex offenders were essentially tipped off to take greater care in hiding their identities. It would have been far better if law enforcement and the politicians had dealt with MySpace carefully and discretely.
But, it seems, they preferred to put on a show. I think I’ll save the “bravos” for a more deserving production.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.